1. UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER
MILL 1
UTILITARIANISM: GREATEST HAPPINESS FOR THE
GREATEST NUMBER

2. JOHN STUART MILL 1806-1873 Champion of Personal liberty Women’s rights
Agent for Social progress
A founder of
liberalism as political movement

3. A world without pleasure or pain
BACKGROUND
Empiricism vs. Rationalism in Ethics
Empiricist Ethicists:
Epicurus ( BCE)
Bentham ( )
Inclusion of animals
RAA argument:
A world without pleasure or pain
has no good or bad.

4. The Greatest Happiness Principle
Happiness is the summum bonum (640, 643): “pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends,…”
Greatest Happiness Principle (643): “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”

5. The Greatest Happiness Principle
Note: GHP concerns actions
[but may be applied to anything:
persons, practices, laws, devices, etc.
Happiness =DEF “pleasure and the absence of pain” (643, cf. 646)
“Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof” (642)

6. Quantity vs. Quality (643-5)
GHP - COMPLICATION 1
Quantity vs. Quality (643-5)
Assumption: there are higher (mental) and lower (bodily) pleasures
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” (644)
[better=more pleasant?]

7. GHP - COMPLICATION 1 SO: We should choose the higher pleasures.
Why? Because they give us greater pleasure. [greater?]
How do we know? Decision of “competent judges,” those who have experienced both types of pleasure (645), by majority rule. Also see: discussion of moral progress, p. 647.

8. GHP - COMPLICATION 1 PROBLEM:
If higher quality pleasures are more intense or durable, no distinction in quality is needed.
If not, then pleasure is not sufficient.

9. GHP - COMPLICATION 2 Self vs. Others (645-649)
GHP “…standard is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the greatest amount of happiness altogether”
“[W]hole sentient creation” must be considered (646).
Explains heroes/martyrs.

10. GHP - COMPLICATION 2 PROBLEM:
Individual rights are [must be?] sacrificed for the general good.
Examples:
1. The philosopher and the rugby team: confrontation in The Beaver
2. Rawls: Innocent hanged to curtail rioting